Abstract
This publication presents organ absorbed dose and effective dose coefficients for patients resulting from common diagnostic radiographic examinations, calculated using computational voxel phantoms representing the ICRP reference newborn, 1-year-old, 5-year-old, 10-year-old, 15-year-old, and adult male and female. Reference imaging examinations were firstly defined to cover the most common projections of clinical practice. In this publication, these examinations are limited to the digital radiography technique that would be clinically consistent with imaging the body morphometry of the reference individuals. Monte Carlo radiation transport simulations for the reference imaging exams were performed using the radiation transport codes GEANT4 (Geometry and Tracking, version 4) and EGSnrc (Electron Gamma Shower National Research Council of Canada) to report organ absorbed dose and effective dose coefficients for each of the reference computational phantoms and for each of the relevant reference imaging exams. For quality assurance purposes, and following standard procedures developed for other ICRP publications presenting dose coefficients using reference phantoms, further spot-check calculations were performed. The Monte Carlo calculations were performed for monoenergetic radiation fields in 1 keV photon energy bins from 3 to 150 keV for adults and from 1 to 80, 100 or 120 keV for infants and children, allowing the reconstruction of dose coefficients for spectral beams. From the monoenergetic values, effective and organ absorbed dose coefficients for several x-ray spectra for the defined radiographic projections were computed using a convolution program. These organ absorbed dose coefficients are given as dose normalised to kerma-area product (KAP, PKA), in mGy Gy−1 cm−2 and to dose per air kerma free-in-air at 1 m distance from the source in units of mGy Gy−1. The effective dose coefficients are given in units of mSv Gy−1 cm−2 and mSv Gy−1, respectively. The present publication is the first of a series reporting organ absorbed and effective doses for various diagnostic x-ray modalities.
Electronic Supplement for Sections 6.1 and 6.2: AbdomenAP_Spectral.xlsx
Electronic Supplement for Sections 6.1 and 6.2: AbdomenAP_mono.xlsx